Virtual Spelunking

We had a great day today. It felt very productive and all day I kept being pleasantly surprised with how late it wasn't.

We started the morning by (finally) cracking open our dinosaur fossil that had been drying all week.

It worked perfectly and the kids were both suitably impressed with how you could see the impression of the dinosaur's skin left in the mud. I had them imagine that there was only bones lying on top of that perfect dinosaur imprint. They thought that was pretty cool.


Next we did math, more subtraction but this time with borrowing, as in 63-8. Next came phonics and Cameron was thrilled to find out that the entire lesson was games! First we played "The OO Sort and Shuffle" where you had to sort words with the long /oo/ (as in tooth or moon) and short /oo/ (as in shook or wood). This was surprisingly fun to do. Next was a "OO Sound Scavenger Hunt" where Cameron was given index cards with instructions to find something "you should clean" or something "made of wood." We always have a good time with the scavenger hunts. When we finished that game, Cameron and Cassia surprised me by saying, "Remember that Crossing the River game where you had to jump on the 'U' words? Let's play that!" Um, yeah, I remember that game: I remember everyone complaining about having to read the words and it being not nearly as much fun as I had hoped! But, I agreed and set the words up in the back yard and they had a blast playing it. Cameron did really well reading the words too. Next Cassia and I (finally) did Lesson 2 of OPGTR and learned the short vowel sound for /e/. She wanted to do "i" too, but I told her it would have to wait until tomorrow.

After that was lunch and Zaboomafoo. After lunch we read a lesson in Artistic Pursuits about Art in Caves and then took a virtual tour of the Lascaux Cave in France. Both Cameron and Cassia were pretty interested in it though Cassie had a hard time visualizing the images at times, especially the engravings. Next we made cave art and I have to say I am quite pleased with how they came out. Of course, I always say that, don't I? LOL, I guess I can't help being a proud momma.

Even though this is the first time I have actually gotten around to Art or Music on Fridays despite my "schedule," I did manage to get the history related project in as was scheduled in my Master History Plan, so that's good. I think the next one in making Grecian Vases so we have a while... oh wait, good thing I looked. The next three are "Near-Eastern Pottery" from Jericho, "Minoan Fresco Painting" (though the instructions say to do it with watercolor crayons and paper. I wonder if it would work - and how messy it would be - to use poster paint on plaster of paris or something), and "Egyptian Murals." So it looks like there is a project for about every other chapter in SOTW.

So I was very impressed with the amount of work we did today and we were still done by 1:30. And I even got my blog and attendance records/log done before 4:00. Now if I can just manage to get the vacuuming and the laundry finished too, I'd be golden. ;)